


Fallen Angel

by TheGreatCatsby



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Skating, Blackfrost - Freeform, F/M, Ice Skating AU, figure skating
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-17
Updated: 2013-12-17
Packaged: 2018-01-04 23:20:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,491
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1086867
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGreatCatsby/pseuds/TheGreatCatsby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He loved those moments. Spinning impossibly fast so he could hardly think, or feel, or hear, and there was nothing but the acceleration of his heart and the air whispering past his body.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fallen Angel

**Author's Note:**

> This whole ice skating AU thing has really blown up on Tumblr. I like it because figure skating is awesome. (You should watch Johnny Weir skate if you can.) The stories have been pretty limited to Thorki, so I wanted to try something a bit different. I hope you enjoy it. Also, I'm shocked because this is one of the few stories I've written where the end isn't angst-filled. Which is nice. I feel like figure skating stories lend themselves to happy endings. 
> 
> Anyway, this song is what I picture Loki skating to in the final part of the competition.

The rink was empty, save for one figure twirling on the ice. The only sound came from his skates, carving elaborate lines into the glassy surface, and the music that Loki imagined in his mind, the soundtrack of a song that he’d heard over and over for months, that he knew every beat of, every rise and fall, based on how his feet and body would move. 

He finished off with a spin. Spins were easy for him; controlled chaos where everything fell away, even the ice, and he came in upon himself and was nothing but pure energy. He loved those moments. Spinning impossibly fast so he could hardly think, or feel, or hear, and there was nothing but the acceleration of his heart and the air whispering past his body. 

He slowed to a stop and opened his eyes. 

The rink was not empty. 

A woman with short red hair stood at the the edge of the rink, behind the glass, watching him with her arms folded, her expression blank. 

Loki turned and skated to the opposite end of the ice, expending some of the energy that still coursed through him. When he turned again to glide towards where the woman had been, she was gone. 

And it was just him, standing alone in the middle of the ice. 

**  
“Clint Barton,” Nick Fury said, shaking his head. “That motherfucker.” He glared at Loki, who was busy tying his skates tight enough that they wouldn’t cause any injuries. He didn’t say anything. If he did, he would probably get himself in trouble. Again. 

“You have to go for the quad,” Fury said, “and you have to land it. And everything has to be flawless. Barton is precision personified.” 

“I know,” Loki said. He wasn’t worried about his short routine; it was the free skate that bothered him. It was a longer song, which meant more time to impress the judges. It also meant more time for mistakes. 

“Do you?” Fury asked. Loki glanced up at him. “Sometimes I wonder whether you let yourself get too distracted.” 

Loki clenched his jaw and returned to lacing his skates. 

“Maybe you like failure,” Fury added. 

“I don’t,” Loki snapped. 

“Prove it,” Fury said, and then he was out of the room. 

Loki felt like throwing something. 

**

His short skate went well, but so did Barton’s. Barton was older, probably on his way to retirement, but this season was big for him. He had been injured a year ago and had been unable to compete. This was his comeback, and many said he couldn’t do it. He wanted to prove them wrong. 

Loki was different. He was new to the ranks of the most elite. People liked his style of controlled chaos, of throwing all of his emotions onto the ice, but it meant that he was more at risk for accidents caused by losing the precarious balance that all skaters had while careening across the rink. 

People didn’t include the critics. The critics thought his style was too different, too volatile, at times too soft and nothing like the controlled skating of most of his competitors. They didn’t see much of a future for him. 

He was here without his family. They hated that he’d chosen this useless sport as a career. So he’d run away and gotten sponsorship based on his talent. And a coach. A tough coach, but a coach who had as much to prove as Loki did. Which was good, even if they were more often at odds than not. 

The worst part was the interviews afterwards, where Loki had to sit next to Clint and they had to listen to each other talk and they both tried to be civil. Loki wanted to be as far away from the competition as possible. 

As soon as the interviews were done he made his way out of the crowd, but just as he thought he was in the clear, a hand on his arm stopped him. 

He turned to find the red-haired woman from yesterday watching him. “That was a good program,” she said. “You came in second.” 

Loki frowned at her. “You were watching me yesterday.” 

The woman nodded. “Natasha Romanov,” she said. The name sounded familiar. 

“Loki Laufeyson,” he said. “Why were you watching me?” 

Natasha smiled at him. “Checking out the competition.” 

Loki raised an eyebrow. “You’re-”

“Not mine. For a friend.” 

“A friend,” Loki repeated. “Is he nervous?” 

“Are you?” Natasha asked. 

Loki remembered where he’d heard the name. Natasha was part of the women’s program. “You’re competing,” he said. 

Natasha nodded. “Most people here are.” 

“Who’s your friend?” Loki asked her. 

Natasha stepped back. “Figure it out,” she said, and was gone. 

The women’s short skate was in two hours. Loki decided he would watch. After all, it wasn’t watching the competition. Not really. 

**

Natasha Romanov was good. Really good. 

She skated like Clint, all smooth precision, with a hint of unpredictability. She gave nothing away, no sense of nerves, no sense of where her routine was going, and Loki was captivated by her. Clearly the audience were as well; many had leaned forward in their seats to watch her. She was, apparently, the favorite to win, and had been trained in Russia for almost her whole life. 

As she finished and took her bows, Loki scanned the audience. His eyes landed on a sandy-haired man sitting near the front. Clint. 

Clint was her friend. 

Loki felt ill, and he left before he could see what Natasha’s scores were. 

**

Loki was sitting outside of the stadium. Fury was still taking care of a few things inside before they went off to rest for the night. It was cold, but being inside was hard, what with the other competitors flitting around and trying to size each other up and, in some cases, psych each other out. 

Someone sat next to him. 

Loki closed his eyes, hoping that when he opened them, the other person would be gone. 

Natasha’s voice said, “I saw you in the audience.” 

“I was curious,” Loki said. “Barton is the friend.” 

“He is,” Natasha said. “That injury devastated him. He’s not far from retirement. He doesn’t have time to lose.” 

“It could happen to any of us,” Loki pointed out. “What good does it do to have him know how I skate?” 

“I know your flaws,” Natasha said. “You walk the line so much during your performances. One little thing could push you over the edge. You get too chaotic, and that is where you’re weakest. One little slip and your performance is done. And it’s your first time. Nerves make for some pretty big slips. Other emotions, too. And your skating’s full of it.” 

Loki felt something cold flare in his chest. “You may have talent, but you lack any depth to your skating,” he said. “It’s all precision, rather like Barton. You may toe the line of taking risks but you never really cross it. Your performances lack emotion. Perhaps the audience cannot take their eyes off you, but neither will they feel moved when you finish.” They were glaring at each other; or rather, Loki was glaring at Natasha and she was looking back at him. 

“I don’t need to do anything to you,” Natasha said. “You’re going to do it to yourself.” 

“You don’t think I can win,” Loki said. “You think I’ll fail.” 

“Yes,” Natasha said, “I do. I think you’ll get overwhelmed. We all know your story, about running away from your family to train. Not many people have faith in you. And I don’t think you have faith in yourself.” 

Loki felt sick again. He’d longed to keep his private life private but reporters had pried it out of him. He was paying for it now. She had been watching him. “Your weakness,” he said, “is that you don’t go far enough.” 

“I can take risks,” Natasha said. “It’s all about knowing when to take them.” Her eyes flickered, lower, and then back to Loki’s eyes. “When they’re worth taking. And why.” 

“Clint,” Loki said. 

“I think you’re forgetting something about this sport,” Natasha said. She placed a hand on Loki’s leg, strangely gentle and soft. “You only take risks for yourself.” She leaned forward, closing the space between them, and kissed him. 

It wasn’t soft, but it was more of an invitation than anything. Like a question. Loki answered in kind, and her hand slid up his back and clutched at his hair. He kissed her like a drowning man, and he wasn’t sure whether he was doing it because of the way she’d captivated him earlier, or because he was trying to make her forget about telling him the things that might ruin his mindset for the competition, or because he was trying to prove something to her, or to himself. But he became lost in it. Lost in a way that he hadn’t been in a long time outside of spinning on the ice. 

Natasha pulled away first. Loki was breathing hard. “Why did you do that?” he asked. 

Natasha stood up in a movement far too graceful for someone who had been sitting on a cold bench for so long. “Your coach is here,” she said, and then she left. 

Loki barely registered Fury telling him that they had to go a few seconds later. 

**

The next morning Loki’s mind was a blur. He kept shaking, which wasn’t good. He’d had nerves before a performance, but not like this. This performance was his ticket to proving himself to the competitive skating world at large. This was his time to show that this had been worth pursuing. He could go on to the Olympics if he did this right. 

Keeping a cool head was half the battle. 

An hour before the performance, Loki rushed into the bathroom and emptied his stomach. After the heaving subsided, and the world didn’t spin every time he had any sort of thought, he leaned against the stall and took several deep breaths, trying to focus on the performance. He’d chosen music to fit some of his most energetic, chaotic, challenging choreography. And the music made him want to move in those challenging ways, which was good. It would keep him on his toes. 

If he could concentrate. 

His head spun and he thought he’d be sick again. He swallowed heavily and took another deep breath. 

The only blessing was that he hadn’t seen Clint all day. He hoped, a bit spitefully, that Clint was feeling the same way as he was. 

After a few more minutes Loki made his way out of the bathroom to change into his costume, feeling mercifully less like his stomach would end up on the floor and more like someone who could at least walk out onto the ice, if not quite skate on it yet. 

He hardly heard what Fury said to him right before he was meant to go on. Words had lost their meaning. He knew what Fury wanted, and it was the same thing that he wanted. He didn’t need to know more than that. 

The only thing he heard clearly was his name. 

He glided to the center of the rink to the sound of cheers. He took his position. And he looked up, briefly, from the ice and locked eyes with Natasha, sitting in the audience, watching him intently. 

She was here to see him lose. 

He turned his head to the side, and the music started, and then he was lost. 

The music was all that mattered, now. He spun and jumped and weaved and created a pattern in the ice that only he knew inside-and-out, one that had taken months of effort, for this one chance to show everyone else what he could do. He was flying, nearly falling, gliding and spinning and there was nothing but him and this surface and the way his body responded to it, and the swell of the music forcing him on and on and on and it felt wonderful—

And he was spinning and spinning and spinning and then he stopped, breathless, and the roaring crowd filled his ears and—

It was over. 

Loki dropped into a bow that probably made him look exhausted, like a puppet with cut strings, but he didn’t care. As he forced himself upright again, he felt his chest heaving from the exertion. From the thrill. His heart pounded almost as loudly as the crowd cheered, and he skated off to meet Fury, who gave him a look that seemed suspiciously like satisfaction. 

The scores put him in first place. 

Loki didn’t even know what happened next. He was dizzy. When he came back to himself he was alone in one of the back rooms, a towel over his shoulders, a golden medal around his neck and his skates still on his feet. 

Somehow, after the past few hours, after all the interviews and talking and smiling for the crowd, Loki’s body was still coursing energy, making him want to move, to go do something, to burn up. He made his way back out onto the rink and began skating. 

It wasn’t a routine. He just did what came to mind in each moment, allowing the ice to carry him around, allowing his thoughts to make up a dance that not even he knew. 

A figure moving past him took him out of his reverie. 

He spun to a stop and saw Natasha glide past him. She stopped a few feet away as well. “Congratulations,” she said. 

“Thank you,” Loki said. 

“I saw you,” Natasha said. “It was brilliant. I think you did it just to spite me.”

“I had a lot to prove,” Loki said. 

“We all do,” Natasha reminded him. “Some of us more than others. And that kind of thing can make or break you.” 

“I run on spiting others,” Loki said. He was only half joking. 

Natasha smirked. “Well, I can’t say I’m shocked. I mean, I’m sure you’ve heard what people say about you. You’d have to want to spite them a lot to get past that.” 

“Why are you here?” Loki asked. 

“I wanted to congratulate you,” Natasha said. “And I wanted to skate with you.” 

“Skate with me,” Loki repeated. “The competition is over. I don’t think Barton needs to know anything more about me.” 

“This isn’t for Barton,” Natasha said. “And you should know more than anyone that it isn’t over. It never is.” 

Loki had never skated with someone else before. But he remembered the kiss from the night before and wondered if they could skate with as much passion together. It would be beautiful. 

Natasha held out her hand. “Come on,” she said. 

Loki took her hand and she led him in a dance across that rink that was only for them. 

And Loki could lose himself in her dance, too.


End file.
